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| UNC Cheating Scandal | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Oct 23 2014, 10:46 PM (219 Views) | |
| Wahoo08 | Oct 23 2014, 10:46 PM Post #1 |
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I doubt this will surprise anybody, but for 20 years, UNC ran a program that offered courses to mainly athletes, in which the sole purpose was to boost their GPAs. This included lectures in which there weren't actually lectures to attend and courses in which the only work required was to write a single paper (and you can guess how tough the grading was). Part me doesn't really care anymore, because lets face it, in a couple of months, this story will have been forgotten. Another cheating scandal will arise in a year or two and people will fake outrage, but nothing will change. I'm pretty much at the point where I wish the NFL and NBA would just create a minor league and we could stop using the NCAA as such. For some even more wishful thinking, I wish the NCAA would try to return some semblance of amateurism to college athletics. Break up the "super conferences" and put a "salary cap" on the athletic departments. Stop pimping out the athletes and raking in money by selling their jerseys and likeness to video game makers, while at the same time, cracking down on them for selling their own autographs. But alas, nothing will change.... Washington Post |
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| Cbear | Oct 23 2014, 10:58 PM Post #2 |
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The teachers in legit departments must cringe when they get a classfull of barely literate athaletez with the schools expectation they look the other way and pass them. |
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| Wahoo08 | Oct 23 2014, 11:01 PM Post #3 |
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That's why this plan was so brilliant. They just made up new classes for the athletes. Everybody is happy now! |
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| Wahoo08 | Oct 23 2014, 11:11 PM Post #4 |
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When I was at UVa, I took some classes with some athletes and it was a mixed bag. You obviously don't interact much with anybody during the larger lecture courses, but it's much harder to blend in when you have 10 or 15 people in a class. I took a class with one of our star basketball players and he seemed like a nice guy and came to class pretty much every day. He was also painfully quiet, but whenever he was forced to speak up or contribute, it was always a train wreck. You actually had to wonder how he managed to pass high school. He just couldn't grasp even the most basic principles of the class. You had to feel bad for the guy because was one of the biggest names on campus, but still came to class every day. He just was in way over his head. One of our QB's was in the same class and he was the polar opposite. If you didn't know he was on the football team you'd think he was a typical student that worked his ass off in high school and got accepted based on his academics. He was a little too talkative, but could hold his own with anybody in class. I also took a class with Chris Long. He never went. Edited by Wahoo08, Oct 23 2014, 11:12 PM.
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| Deleted User | Oct 24 2014, 02:33 AM Post #5 |
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This is nothing new and the only thing that is shitty about is how they're trying to spin it like it's a minor, isolated problem and they've nipped it already. |
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| AnteUp | Oct 24 2014, 03:59 AM Post #6 |
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this shit starts waaaaay before college
the nba has a minor league. its called the d-league Edited by AnteUp, Oct 24 2014, 04:00 AM.
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| jmose86 | Oct 24 2014, 07:33 AM Post #7 |
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Is that an accurate description though? Honest question because I have only read a little about it. Was it really solely made for and targeting athletes, or did they just benefit from it or it evolved into that on its own? I mean there were 3100 students involved and only half were athletes. Plus you have to consider that these athletes are obviously all close knit groups which are sharing this information with each other, so that skews their participation in these classes as being much higher than a random selection. There were classes like this at my university that everyone knew about where there were lectures with no attendance or work done within them, online only courses, and complete joke electives that just required like 2 submitted papers as the coursework for the whole semester. Now, that doesn't account for coaches asking for better grades or whatever, if any of that occurred which I read something about. |
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| Deleted User | Oct 24 2014, 10:09 AM Post #8 |
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Jmose - I don't know the details - but the way it was described to me was that the program was made available to everyone (basically a program where you don't have to go to class and you get a paper graded at the end) and the athletes and "high profile students" were directed to take these programs for an "easy A". Now - keep in mind this is coming from the new ADs (or someone similar - not sure what he was for UNC) mouth - so it could all be BS. He also claimed that over the span of 30 years - only a couple hundred students ever took part in this program - which I think has to be BS. You're looking at 15 students a year if you assume "a couple hundred" means 300 students. There's just no way. To put this in perspective - I went to a much smaller school with a much smaller athletic program and played in a much smaller sport that generated almost 0 revenue. There were people doing similar stuff on my wrestling team and getting grades to stay eligible. I can only imagine what it's like for a big time football player at a major university. |
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| Wahoo08 | Oct 24 2014, 11:08 AM Post #9 |
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We all know the D-league isn't a true minor league though. It's basically a holding pen for borderline NBA talent in case a NBA player goes down and a team needs a quick replacement. Some players may come up through the D-league, but you can't compate it to MLB's minor league system. |
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| Deleted User | Oct 24 2014, 11:13 AM Post #10 |
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Just so you know - you basically described what a minor league is supposed to be. The problem with the NBA is the "pay me now" mentality that it's created. If a player thinks they're good or think they'll develop - they usually will just play abroad if they don't make an NBA roster. With that said though - the talent in the NBA is spread thinner than you might think - so if you're a good player who knows they're going to play in the league - chances are you're going to be on a team from day 1. Baseball is a bit different because of how long the schedule is, the way the game is, etc - so sometimes you get a prospect who has more talent than anyone on the team, but they put them in the minors anyway. Careers have been ended by waiting to call someone up too long and by bringing them in too quickly. It's just different - but they still serve the same purpose - if that makes sense. |
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| Wahoo08 | Oct 24 2014, 11:18 AM Post #11 |
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I've only a read a little bit about it, so I can't say I'm especially knowledgeable on the story. As I understand it though, athletes made up about 3-4% of the student population and about 50% of the students enrolled in these classes. Which mean: 1.) Half of the students enrolled in these courses weren't even athletes. Makes me wonder who they were. I'd imagine if the classes were well known and open to everybody, you have a lot more students enrolling for an easy A. 2.). Athletes were overrepresented in these classes by a factor of 15. It's hard to not believe that they were intentionally funneled through these classes. |
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| Deleted User | Oct 24 2014, 11:28 AM Post #12 |
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The way I understood it (and don't mistake that for me doing any research on the subject) is that it was a legitimate way to earn a grade. Kind of like CLEP type tests except backwards. basically - they gave you the textbook and curriculum, told you to learn it and take a test at the end of the year. Could work wonders for people who were already experts on the subject (i.e. someone who grew up on a pig farm taking a pig slaughtering class or something) or for people who can study on their own and learn without the need for classes. So you never go to class - take a test - and voila! - you have an A (or a grade). It's ripe for abuse because if a teacher gives a student a grade - they're basically passing/failing them. If the star QB is in their class - I'm sure it's made very clear to the teacher that the star QB passes with flying colors (because he's worth millions to the school). Now, I'll say this - I didn't know of any classes like that when I was in school but I did have more than a handful of opportunities from teachers to just "come in when I need to *wink wink*" and have a guaranteed A. And I was a no level wrestler at a university where wrestling isn't huge and generated 0 revenue. As to your second point - it's another thing I found odd with the AD's (or whatever he was) response to the allegations. He really stuck to saying and specifying "football players" over and over and when he casually glanced over how many athletes were in the "program" - it could be interpretted as "total athletes in the school" or "football players who took part in the program". As we know, UNC isn't exactly a football school - the basketball team is where the real worry lies (although amateurism in basketball is neither here or there mainly because kids stay there for a year and bail. |
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| jmose86 | Oct 24 2014, 11:47 AM Post #13 |
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I've been a part of and heard of some ridiculous classes. Had a psych class where u could watch the lectures online, but there was no tracking of it and almost none of the lecture stuff was included on tests or papers, which I think there were two the entirety of the semester with no other coursework. The class was also held at like 5 different universities, and the lectures each week just consisted of a guest speaker at one university, and the other 4 classrooms would watch from their classroom on a big screen via a skype connection, then we would go to a camera view of each class and kids would ask the speakers questions. One of the classes was a local college that had 2 kids in the whole class, and 1 never showed up, so it was just an Indian kid named Amal in a little conference room by himself, lol. We would check in with all the classrooms at the beginning of each lecture and it would be like: "Purdue, are you there?" Then the video would switch to Purdue classroom and we see a lecture hall full of students. "Michigan are you there?" Same thing. Then finally "Amal you there?", and everyone would see little ol' Amal sitting in a room by himself. There was also a New Orleans school that was part of the circuit, and during Katrina they just never checked in, and we never heard from them again.
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| Deleted User | Oct 24 2014, 11:49 AM Post #14 |
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I took a "Fantasy Baseball Analytics" course my senior year. Ended up dropping it because it was WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too fucking hard and the "professor" took the course WAY WAY WAY WAY WAY too seriously |
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| jmose86 | Oct 24 2014, 12:00 PM Post #15 |
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"History of Rock and Roll" was the hardest class I took at university, and it was common knowledge to all the upper classmen how hard it was. The problem was it was one of a select few options for a liberal arts credit for business majors and all the options filled up quickly. It was a 300 student lecture and you had to be at every single class. The tests were freaking impossible because you had to memorize 50 songs, and then identify them from a 10 second clip played during the test. That should sound hard, but if it doesn't, trust me, it is. It also meant studying took forever because you had to listen to all these damn songs for days on end. |
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